Stephanie Otis EDC 102H Personal Knowledge Base (PKB) Reflection
To be honest, I did not like the idea of the PKB when it was first introduced to us in class. To say it rather bluntly, I hated it. I was content with my listing system in Microsoft Word, and/or my method of e-mailing myself important links I may want to revisit. Naturally, I am not a very tech-savy person or learner. Why did I need to replace it with this fancy application called Evernote? Although, I did like the overall idea of the PKB, the idea of having one central area to store sources and notes and the ability to build both to it and off of it. However, although it took time -- maybe a little too much time -- (and a lot of "stupid cool tricks" from Dr. Fogleman), I warmed up to the idea of using Evernote to create my PKB. Now, I am both relieved and thankful when I see the elephant icon of the Web Clipper. It saves me so much time. I don't have to compose an e-mail to myself or open a word document to copy and paste the link into. Instead, I just click on my elephant. In addition to saving websites, blogs, and articles that I want to revisit or that have the chance of being useful to me in the future, I utilized Evernote a lot for this class. With Evernote, I was able to see the shared documents from Dr. Fogleman, some of which were even homework assignments. It was an easy and effective way to conduct a class which relies heavily on our laptops. Additionally, as the semester progressed, we did a lot more research and a lot more context report writing that required in-text citations and references. Without Evernote and Zotero, I don't know how I would have done this so efficiently. Having all of your sources in one central place and having their citations with the click of two keys and the mousepad was incredibly refreshing. The more I utilized these advantages of my PKB, the easier and faster this professional writing and citing became for me. I am happy about this. As I became more comfortable with Evernote, I expanded my PKB to include my WRT 106 Intro. To Research Writing class. Just by the title of this course, it seems obvious how Evernote helped me. Throughout the course of the semester, we learned how to write, and wrote, a research paper. My topic was Rape Culture in Developing Countries. I had collected an overwhelmingly large amount of information. Evernote was a great place to store my sources. Zotero was helpful in citing these sources. Because I was using Evernote for both EDC 102H and WRT 106, I organized them beginning with the class name (EDC102, WRT106) and then the specific topic in which they were for, such as "RapeCulture" or "Pawtucket". This made it easy to find what I needed. I am very excited that I have these notes as lasting resources. Now I have the ability to look back on any of these notes at any time. Although I have not yet expanded my PKB directly to my major, I am sure I will as I move into more challenging courses. Each semester, I can build off of what I already have. In the future, I want to take more EDC and HDF classes. I'm sure my notes from EDC102H will come in handy. Additionally, thinking ahead to next semester, I'm confident the Evernote and my PKB will be a great system for my WRT 220 class in which I will need many sources to write persuasive and argumentative texts. Although I heavily resisted it at first, my PKB has grown on me.
EDC 102H
Personal Knowledge Base (PKB) Reflection
To be honest, I did not like the idea of the PKB when it was first introduced to us in class. To say it rather bluntly, I hated it. I was content with my listing system in Microsoft Word, and/or my method of e-mailing myself important links I may want to revisit. Naturally, I am not a very tech-savy person or learner. Why did I need to replace it with this fancy application called Evernote? Although, I did like the overall idea of the PKB, the idea of having one central area to store sources and notes and the ability to build both to it and off of it.
However, although it took time -- maybe a little too much time -- (and a lot of "stupid cool tricks" from Dr. Fogleman), I warmed up to the idea of using Evernote to create my PKB. Now, I am both relieved and thankful when I see the elephant icon of the Web Clipper. It saves me so much time. I don't have to compose an e-mail to myself or open a word document to copy and paste the link into. Instead, I just click on my elephant. In addition to saving websites, blogs, and articles that I want to revisit or that have the chance of being useful to me in the future, I utilized Evernote a lot for this class. With Evernote, I was able to see the shared documents from Dr. Fogleman, some of which were even homework assignments. It was an easy and effective way to conduct a class which relies heavily on our laptops. Additionally, as the semester progressed, we did a lot more research and a lot more context report writing that required in-text citations and references. Without Evernote and Zotero, I don't know how I would have done this so efficiently. Having all of your sources in one central place and having their citations with the click of two keys and the mousepad was incredibly refreshing. The more I utilized these advantages of my PKB, the easier and faster this professional writing and citing became for me. I am happy about this.
As I became more comfortable with Evernote, I expanded my PKB to include my WRT 106 Intro. To Research Writing class. Just by the title of this course, it seems obvious how Evernote helped me. Throughout the course of the semester, we learned how to write, and wrote, a research paper. My topic was Rape Culture in Developing Countries. I had collected an overwhelmingly large amount of information. Evernote was a great place to store my sources. Zotero was helpful in citing these sources. Because I was using Evernote for both EDC 102H and WRT 106, I organized them beginning with the class name (EDC102, WRT106) and then the specific topic in which they were for, such as "RapeCulture" or "Pawtucket". This made it easy to find what I needed.
I am very excited that I have these notes as lasting resources. Now I have the ability to look back on any of these notes at any time. Although I have not yet expanded my PKB directly to my major, I am sure I will as I move into more challenging courses. Each semester, I can build off of what I already have. In the future, I want to take more EDC and HDF classes. I'm sure my notes from EDC102H will come in handy. Additionally, thinking ahead to next semester, I'm confident the Evernote and my PKB will be a great system for my WRT 220 class in which I will need many sources to write persuasive and argumentative texts.
Although I heavily resisted it at first, my PKB has grown on me.